Category Archive: History

Beginning in 1933, when the Nazis took power, tens of thousands of German Christians — baptized, confirmed, and church-going — received official letters informing them that they were now classified as Jews. For the Nazis, “Jew” was a race, not a faith. Nazi functionaries digging in church baptismal records had turned up a parent or …

Suddenly Jews is the story of baptized, church-going Christians who one day in early 1933 found themselves classified as Jews by the Nazi authorities, because their ancestors had belonged to a synagogue. The sudden Jews were between a rock and a hard place. The synagogues did not know them, and the official church did not …